I write this on a cold winter day, January 7, 2025, when former President Jimmy Carter’s body is being flown from Georgia to the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. There people will stand outside for hours for a chance to file past the 39th president’s casket.

Carter was just a few months older than my father, Elmer S. Yoder (1925-2007). My father would have turned 100 in 2025 if he were still living. In their later years photos of Carter and my father looked much alike.

While writing a history of the Maple Grove Mennonite Church, Hartville, Ohio, one of the men gave me a copy of a photo of Hartville workers at a Habitat for Humanity worksite in 1987. They built houses with Carter that year in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they came to know Carter. This is a photo I like.

I voted for the first time in a presidential election in 1980. I optimistically voted for Carter and was then devastated when he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan. Two years before the 1980 election I traveled to Egypt, along with three other young Mennonite men in our early twenties. The Egyptians welcomed us because they were so affectionate toward Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Accords he developed between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin of Israel. It felt like we were visiting American heroes to the Egyptians.

But Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity, his development of the Carter Center in Atlanta, and his continual efforts toward peace are his great legacies. All of these he worked at after being soundly beaten in the 1980 election.

May God bless Carter’s family and Americans who mourn the loss of a great man who lived a Kingdom-focused life.